Elena Hartwell Talks about Dogs and Love
I have always loved dogs. Big dogs, little dogs, and everything in between. I have an especially deep appreciation and respect for old dogs—their graying faces and stiff joints show their age, while the twinkle in their eyes and tail wags show their continued joy in living.
Currently, I live with two dogs. Polar is a ten-year-old English Cream Golden Retriever—eighty-five pounds of fur and love. Wyatt is a three-year-old Shichon, half Shih Tzu and half Bichon Frisse. He weighs in at twenty-one pounds and likes to take Polar down at the ankles. They are hilarious together.
My books often have animals in them. Cats, dogs, horses … life is so much fuller with them around, it makes sense my fictional characters feel that way too.
Eddie Shoes is not a dog person when we first meet her. When I discovered Eddie, I just knew that her life would be better with a dog, because whose life isn’t better with a dog? I won’t give away the role the dog takes, but suffice to say, you will meet one in One Dead, Two to Go, the first book of the series, and he soon became a fan favorite.
The second book in the series, Two Heads are Deader Than One is dedicated to five dogs: Irene, ‘Cuda, Ginger, Polar, and Wyatt, the world’s greatest dogs.
Irene was my first dog. She was a mix of German Shepherd and Terrier, with a few other breeds mixed in. She had long back legs and short front legs, and I named her for my Granny, Marjorie Irene Davis Hartwell. I got her from the Humane Society when I was about nine years old, and the dog lived to be eighteen.
I started school in another state when I was eighteen, and Irene remained at my parents’ house. When they were gone, Irene would let herself out of the yard and run up the street to be let in at my Granny’s house. It didn’t take long before she was a full-time resident at Granny’s.
When I returned to San Diego, Granny said to me, “You aren’t going to take my dog away are you?” Of course I could not! So, I would visit them together at Granny’s house until Irene died as a very old dog, and we buried her in Granny’s yard. She was Granny’s first and only dog, and I’m so glad I brought a dog into her life.
‘Cuda also lived to be a very old dog. He was a Husky/German Shepard/Coyote cross that I adopted when he was nine months old. He’d been abused and was very cautious when meeting new people, but we bonded immediately. He was my constant companion until he was sixteen and I finally had to put him down. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
The rule I have for dogs is if they can stand, and they aren’t in pain, I will deal with any physical or health issues they have. But if they are in pain that’s not going to improve, or can’t stand that won’t resolve, it’s time to let them go.
The morning came when he couldn’t stand, and I knew it was time. I held him while he breathed his last. I knew it was best for him, and the vet assured me that it was the kindest choice I could make, but I felt awful.
Three months later, still feeling guilt and grief over ending his life, I visited a friend down in Eugene, Oregon. When we woke up on Saturday morning, my friend asked me what I wanted to do that day. I immediately said, “We have to go to the Farmer’s Market.”
I’d never felt compelled to do that before, but a voice inside me said we had to go. We arrived, and my friend said, “Now what?”
“We have to walk this way.” I started off down the street as if pulled by an invisible string.
A woman sat at a table on a corner. I said, “I’m supposed to go and talk to her.”
A sign next to her read, Animal Totems, $1.
I said to my friend, “I’m supposed to get my Animal Totem.”
The fortune teller stood with her deck and began to fan the cards out, face down. I grabbed one right away. She laughed and said, “Most people wait until I have the full deck fanned out.”
But I knew it was my card.
The image on the Coyote card could have been a pen and ink drawing of ‘Cuda. The woman explained about the Coyote as the trickster, but also a smart and wily friend. I began to cry.
Then I told her of losing my dog, and the guilt I felt for ending his life. She said, “We know who the message is from, but we don’t yet know the message, you have to draw another card.”
I pulled the Swan card, and the fortune teller began to cry. I asked her what the message was. “The Swan card is about living in grace. Your dog wants you to know that he is in a better place. You did the only thing you could for him at the end of his life.”
My friend began to cry. The three of us stood on that street corner in the fall sunshine and cried, but I walked away carrying only the grief of loss, not the burden of guilt.
If I hadn’t experienced that event, I wouldn’t have believed it. I have never felt that kind of direction from outside myself again. ‘Cuda and I were bonded in a very special way, and even from the other side, whatever that might be, he reached out to me.
Ginger belonged to my husband when we first met. I like to say it was love at first sight for me and Ginger, JD had to work a little harder. I had been dogless for about two years after losing ‘Cuda and had just begun looking for a dog again. I’d rented a place with a yard, where I could have dogs, and had begun visiting dog shelters, but had not yet found one to bring home.
JD and I met online and had a wonderful first date. Not long after, he came to visit me in Port Townsend, where I was living, and brought Ginger. As soon as she got out of the car, she raced to me as if we’d known each other for years. She smiled and I thought, well … here’s my dog.
JD and I have been married for almost twelve years. Losing Ginger was devastating, but we now share Polar and Wyatt, and they are, as always, the best of dogs.
Our lives are rich and full in part because of the animals—the dogs, two cats, and three horses—who share our life.
I wouldn’t want my life, or my characters’ lives, any other way.
***
One Dead, Two to Go
Get Your Copy: Book One in the Eddie Shoes Mystery Series
Private Investigator Edwina “Eddie Shoes” Schultz’s most recent job has her parked outside a seedy Bellingham hotel, photographing her quarry as he kisses his mistress goodbye. This is the last anyone will see of the woman … alive. Her body is later found dumped in an abandoned building. Eddie’s client, Kendra Hallings, disappears soon after. Eddie hates to be stiffed for her fee, but she has to wonder if Kendra could be in trouble too. Or is she the killer? Eddie usually balks at matters requiring a gun, but before she knows it, she is knee-deep in dangerous company, spurred on by her card-counting adrenaline-junkie mother who has shown up on her doorstep fresh from the shenanigans that got her kicked out of Vegas. Chava is only sixteen years older than Eddie and sadly lacking in parenting skills. Her unique areas of expertise, however, prove to be helpful in ways Eddie can’t deny, making it hard to stop Chava from tagging along. Also investigating the homicide is Detective Chance Parker, new to Bellingham’s Major Crimes unit but no stranger to Eddie. Their history as a couple back in Seattle is one more kink in a chain of complications, making Eddie’s case more frustrating and perilous with each tick of the clock.
Book Details:
Genre: Private Eye Mystery Published by: Open Road Media, March 2024 Series Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
Read an excerpt from One Dead, Two to Go:
CHAPTER ONE
Call me Eddie Shoes. Not a very feminine moniker, but it suits me. My father’s name was Eduardo Zapata. In a fit of nostalgia, my mother Chava named me Edwina Zapata Schultz, even though by the time I was born she hadn’t seen my father in seven months. Edwina was a mouthful to saddle any child with, so at the ripe old age of six, I announced that I would only answer to Eddie. I didn’t have any nostalgia for a guy I’d never met, so Zapata just seemed like a name no one ever spelled right the first time. Chava wasn’t particularly maternal in any conventional sense, so not a lot of nostalgia for Schultz either. At eighteen I legally changed my name to Eddie Shoes. It said a lot about my sense of humor. Chava and I had come to an understanding. She stayed in my life as long as our contact was minimal and primarily over email. It was just enough to allay her guilt and not enough to make me crazy, so it worked for both of us. She’d always been down about my choice of career, but what did she expect from a girl who called herself Eddie Shoes? If I hadn’t become a private investigator, I probably would have been a bookie, so she should have been a little more positive about the whole thing. My career was the reason I sat hunkered in the car, in the dark, halfway down the block from a tacky hotel, clutching a digital camera and zoom lens, waiting to catch my latest client’s husband with a woman not his wife. I’d already gotten a few choice shots of the guy entering the room, but he’d gone in alone and no one else had arrived. I assumed the other woman was already waiting for him. After tailing the guy for a few days, I had a pretty good guess who the chippie would turn out to be. I didn’t think he’d hired his “office manager” for her filing skills, and sleeping with the married boss was a cliché because it happened all the time. I could already prove the man a liar. He’d told his wife he played poker with the boys on Wednesday nights, and I didn’t think he was shacked up in this dive with three of his closest buddies, unless he was kinkier than I imagined. But then, people never ceased to amaze me. December in Bellingham, Washington, often brought cold, clear weather and that night was no exception. Starting the engine to warm up sounded tempting, but I didn’t want anyone to notice me sitting there. Nice it wasn’t raining, but if the thermometer had crept much over twenty, I hadn’t noticed. To make matters worse, I’d scrunched my almost six-foot frame down in the driver’s seat for more than two hours. Even with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I was half frozen, and desperately hoped my mark didn’t have more stamina than I’d pegged him for. All I wanted was to go home and go to bed. And at some point, I would need to pee. Up on the second floor, the door of the hotel room I had my eye on finally opened. I brought my camera up, ready for the money shots. My earlier pics proved that the dirty white stucco on the side of the building bounced the pale glow from the minimal exterior lights enough for pictures to be clear without a flash. Even from this distance, there was a nice unobstructed view of the location. The only barrier between someone standing on the narrow walk and my camera lens was a flimsy, rusty-looking, wrought-iron railing. The balusters looked too thin to stop anyone from falling the height of the first floor to the asphalt parking lot below. I doubted anything at the tawdry place passed code. But what did I care? I wasn’t going to stay there. The “liar”—I have always been creative with nicknames—stepped out, straightening his tie. I snapped a few pictures and held my breath, hoping the other woman would come out behind him. Even if I took pictures of her exiting a few minutes later, the husband needed to be in the picture with her. A surprising number of wives would argue with me about what actually took place in these various, if interchangeable, hotel rooms. For some reason they would rather believe the info about their husband cheating was fake than admit he strayed, which confused me because I got paid either way. It felt especially crazy when they must already know the truth, otherwise they wouldn’t have hired me in the first place. But I knew better than to look for logic in the ways of the human heart and got the best evidence possible. The man turned sideways. Light from the room behind him threw his face into silhouette. He had an exceptionally generous head of hair, which made him very recognizable even in bad light. Mid-forties, and mostly in good shape, he appeared athletic as long as he didn’t unbutton his sport coat. I could see why women were attracted to him, though he didn’t do a thing for me. I preferred men a little more honest. But then, I’d never been married, so what did I know? A figure moved from behind him into the shadow of the doorway. “Come on, honey, step out into the light.” I held the camera to my eye. “One more step, so I can see your face.” The woman obliged by leaning into the cold blue glow cast by the old style, energy inefficient streetlights, her cheeks stained red in the flash of the vacancy sign. I happily clicked away as the “office manager” wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered sweet nothings in his ear. She clearly wore nothing but lingerie. She must assume no one else would be out this late on such a cold weeknight. Or maybe she enjoyed having people see her, a bit of an exhibitionist in the happy homewrecker. Whatever the cause, she had him in the perfect spot for the best pictures. I loved it when guilty people made my job easy. My photos might not be art, but they were gold in my book. No way the wife could believe this was anything other than what it looked like. Several photos later, the husband extricated himself from the mistress and she ducked back into the room and closed the door. He walked briskly toward a shiny red Chevy Camaro. The guy owned a GM dealership and drove a new car every day. He lit a cigarette, which he puffed on for a few drags before he tossed it into the gutter. Not just a cheater, a litterer. The bastard. The cigarette stench backed his poker party story and covered the smell of another woman, killing two birds with one cancer-causing stone. As soon as he pulled out onto the street, I stretched back up to full height, relieved to still feel my feet. I started up my ancient green Subaru Forrester, cranked my heater, and headed for home, relieved I didn’t have to wait around in the cold for the mistress to reappear. Whatever she did next wasn’t my concern. Having the two of them in the pictures together convinced me my work was done. The hotel was located downtown—the blue-collar north end, not the high-priced, brick, historical south end, so I dropped down to Lakeway Drive, scooted under the freeway, and wound through the streets that curved around Bayview Cemetery. Traffic at ten o’clock on a midweek winter night was light, and I arrived at my little house by ten-thirty. I downloaded the photos from the hotel onto my computer, wrote up a final bill for my client, and went to bed content. What could possibly go wrong with such an easy case? *** Excerpt from One Dead, Two to Go by Elena Hartwell. Copyright 2024 by Elena Hartwell. Reproduced with permission from Elena Hartwell. All rights reserved.Author Bio:
Elena Hartwell spent several years working in theater as a playwright, director, designer, and educator before turning her storytelling skills to fiction. Elena is also a senior editor with Allegory Editing, a developmental editing house, where she works one-on-one with writers to shape and polish manuscripts. If you’d like to work with Elena, visit http://www.allegoryediting.com. Her favorite place to be is at Paradise, the property she and her hubby own south of Spokane, Washington. They live with their horses, Jasper, Radar, and Diggy, their dogs Polar and Wyatt, and their cats Coal Train and Cocoa. Elena holds a B.A. from the University of San Diego, a M.Ed. from the University of Washington, Tacoma, and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. She also writes as Elena Taylor, to learn more visit www.ElenaTaylorAuthor.com
Thanks for sharing, Susan! I loved reading this and learning more about Elena and her love of dogs 🙂 Plus, Eddie is so much fun!!
So glad you enjoyed this guest post, Gina!
I don’t often read “Private Eye” mysteries, but this one hooked me from the first line. I hope you’ll check out Elena’s other books! ~Susan
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing your story with us, Elena. Best wishes to you, ~Susan
Awwww, this was such a sweet post! Got tears in my eyes! 🙂
thanks so much for sharing!
I had to reach for the Kleenex more than once myself, Wendy.
Including the spirit of our beloved dogs in our stories is a wonderful way to keep their memory alive! ~Susan
Polar, Wyatt, and I thank you for hosting Eddie and my guest post on your blog.
You are all very welcome! ~Susan
Letting them go is the hardest thing…but not having them at all would be harder.